Non-turkey Moments

As I was attempting at a catchy title I was going to put something in about turkey, about the turkey event being done and gone, that the leftovers have been eaten, that the carcass soup has been frozen for a future date when it will be discovered, thawed and finally thrown out, but then I changed my mind and decided not to write about turkeys at all. Why should I? They're stupid birds anyway and I've spent too many years with stupid birds, being raised on a chicken farm--hens for the eggs. Chickens are dull creatures. Tuck the head under the wing and they will go to sleep. Or so my father always said. We never tested the thesis despite the numbers of birds at hand. Perhaps we didn't care, or perhaps we took what Dad said on faith, trusting in his truth about chickens. Regardless, the break is over and tomorrow returns to the schedule that is familiar, although that too is coming to an end. Such is life in the academy. The changes of the semester bring changes in schedules. Not great life changes but little ones. Small ones that affect the lives of others. A ripple. Or all by chance and randomness.

Tuesday

Tuesday, named for the Norse goddess Tew, who did who knows what. We good Nordic-Teutonics don't know our old gods anymore except in remnant names. Thor has a hammer in his hand, like John Henry, who we know by having a catchy song--no song, no memory. Thor didn't get a song, at least in English. Perhaps the Swedish children grow up singing songs of Odin, Thor, Loki, and the rest. Sort of a Swedish childhood of Wagnernian proportions. It's easy to imagine when far away in time and space, even though time and space may simply be constructs to make sense of the senseless. A lot like writing. Why do we write? Why do I write? Because I have words and a love of words with words making sense, if not sense then micro-electrical synapse between brain cells. Crossing the cortex of imagination. I've now reduced us all to electricity which is a transposition of subatomic particles which are ruled more by chaos than design (at least that is what the collider in Switzerland hopes to teach us). Then I am a bundle of sub-atomic parts piled atop the other. A rather handsome pile in my own way.

Magic Moments

Once in a while writing provides a few magic moments, like this morning when I started to see one of the stories I've been working on in a different light. Perhaps this is a step taken in which rewriting will be less of a chore and more of a moment of excitement. The first rush of a story is nearly always fun and the words and ideas and characters unfold, like falling into infactuation with the pretty girl I sit next to. Infactuation isn't love, however. Love comes in the revisions, that is seeing deeper and getting to know the story on more than the superficial level. (I fear superficiallity.) I hope for the more in the future.

Lethargy

What to do when lethargy strikes and I don't want to do anything, when writing this is a chore. Chore is a horrid word. A word of dullness, of repetition, of mindless task, of routine. Work becomes a chore, at times, as does life. Could it be any other way since most of what keeps us going bears elements of chores: eating, sleeping, bathing, brushing teeth, etc. To live fully under spontaneity is impossible. Ah, but where's the dancing?

'Tis late, 'tis late

Late indeed and I should be in bed. Yet, the urge to post arises, the urge to reach out and communicate with fellow... I was going to say humans but what if this goes out, via electronics, out of our control, out into the ether, to worlds beyond? Then who is watching or listening or even responding to our blogs? We assume we know. But on the other hand. Unlike snail mail, our posts and email become public extra-terrestrial property open to all sentient life forms that may come across it. While I'm in the purely speculative mode: what if the world did end each time the end was predicted and instead of ending in a great cataclysmic disaster, was simply and calmly rebooted, with all past memories erased and we started over anew. No memory of the past would exist, would it? Memory would start over where it began, somewhere in the middle. Therefore, don't worry about 2012. If the world ends, no one would notice.

Tomorrow's Normal

Tomorrow will come soon enough, before.... and it will demand being normal (as tomorrow always does) and I don't want to be normal. Does that mean I don't want tomorrow to come? No. The two are not identical, an error in coincidence. What is wanted is what isn't for it was then it wouldn't be wanting. But normal? Who decides? Black and white or shades of color? Does blue declare that green is odd and therefore lacking? Or maybe yellow? Or a mixing of many; or a palatte.

Running hot and cold

Without the sun comes the danger of lethargy. Perhaps I am more lizard than I want to admit. Or is it the uncreative chores that beg to be accomplished, like the whole grading business. Meg didn't like the term binge grading when I sit for prolonged periods getting numbers on papers. Abstract concepts laid upon abstract linguisitic constructions. And the students beg for them (like I do when in student mode), setting their self-portraits by the mere particles of ink laid upon the paper in a particular pattern. One slip of the pen would create a different pattern. How easily ink controls us. Ink on assignments, ink on tests, ink on contracts, ink on legislation, treaties, ink on all the licenses we carry from driving to teaching to marriage. Such is the power of the pen.

Not all is gold

Not all that comes out of the pen (or the keyboard) is gold. I've discovered that while working through the novel and discovered a scened that doesn't work. When I first wrote it, under whatever inspiration, I beleived in it, but now, I have serious doubts. Elements of it will be used later on, but not at the current development of the character. She hasn't matured enough to be doing what I had her doing. Perhaps, I'm learning how to write. Taken long enough to get here. It's too easly to slip into maudlinisms. The good point is that I have been able to see it , and to work to contain it.

When is an author an author?

This morning's paper listed local authors published in the Arts Update section. One listed was Stuart Sexton of New Haven. Curiosity carried me to amazon and hence his books. They were, as I suspected, self-published via Lulu. While I'm not going to get into the quality of the writing (bad science fiction), I am going to raise the question: when is an author an author and when should such authorship be announced? Does self-publishing count? The ease of self-publishing has opened the floodgates to all manner of words on pages. I suppose I'm upset at the way the newspaper handled it. If my book gets published would I be lumped in with the self-publishers of the area? I may be grousing about nothing since the book isn't finished. Comments appreciated.

Gone for so long

It has been noted by some that I haven't posted in more than two months. This is not how to maintain a loyal following. I suppose I could fill everyone in on all the details of everything that has transpired over the past two months but please spare me the details of all that I really don't want to read such stuff. A random comment: When I was young I was in love with Sophia Loren. Random comment 2: I never had the chance to meet her. I've never met anyone famous in the entertainment sort of way. I once got drunk with Edward Albee who later invited me to his Writer's Colony on Long Island and I was too young, too arrogant, too stupid to perceive the opportunity when it lay at my feet. I still have a hard time to keep from self flagelation when I consider the time that has passed and that I'm now trying in the desperation of chronology to recover that which was lost which is why I may appear foolish at times, or somehow anachronistic (damn the clocks). Item: On my private bulletin board hang the plans for a 16' sailing barge that would sleep two and would be useful for cruising Lake Erie, slow but steady. On the same bulletin board hang the contests I sent the novel exerpt to and in my fantasies I win to fame and glory while the reality will reveal itself with SASE rejection slips. Item: Beneath the gentle, caring exterior lies an arrogant ass. Watch the last 15 minutes of Hunt for Red October. Comment: Rye whiskey makes the best Manhattan Cocktails, not Bourbon or Canadian. Scotch makes a different drink altogether. Angostura Bitters is the closing touch, that plus a marichino cherry (one of the few grocery items carried by the liquor store). Item: Olga Bergstrom had a recipe for Christmas punch that included: rum, gin, whiskey, lime juice, lemon juice, pineapple chunks, marichino cherries, and something else that escapes me at the moment. The fruit absorbs the alcohol and is a delightful snack for the children. The punch is served diluted with seven-up. Comment: before there was writing there was story telling and the shamans showed the pathways into the caverns of death which end in the realm of life. Then the writers put the stories to poetry for the sake of memory (Illiad, Odessy, Beowulf). The invention of writing ended the need for memory and improvisation locking the tale through pen and ink. Guttenberg merely cemented an ancient process. The computer does nothing but the same, divorcing speaking from writing, reducing it to taps upon electrical connections of the keyboard.
Item: There exists an internet program for the composition of flash fiction. Fill in the blanks for the names, the nouns, the verbs, the modifiers, push the button and zip out comes a ready made story. Comment: Since writing can be so formulaic, why bother with imagination? Item: Maso seeks to do to literature what Abstract Expressionsism did to painting: the reduction to the elements of the story. Comment: Why has writing come along so late to join the artists? Writers are the Midwesterners of the creative concept: twenty years or more behind. It begins in Europe, then twenty years later arrives in New York, then twenty years later settles into the mid-west, already old hat. We still are wrestling with Ezra Pound. Finale: I've made up for lost time. Semi-autobiographical writing carries two dangers: comments on the writing, and comments on the writer. Best stick to iguanas.